How Technology Wrecks the Middle Class

In the four years since the Great Recession officially ended, the productivity of American workers — those lucky enough to have jobs — has risen smartly. But the United States still has two million fewer jobs than before the downturn, the unemployment rate is stuck at levels not seen since the early 1990s and the proportion of adults who are working is four percentage points off its peak in 2000.

This job drought has spurred pundits to wonder whether a profound employment sickness has overtaken us. And from there, it’s only a short leap to ask whether that illness isn’t productivity itself. Have we mechanized and computerized ourselves into obsolescence?

Are we in danger of losing the “race against the machine,” as the M.I.T. scholars Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee argue in a recent book? Are we becoming enslaved to our “robot overlords,” as the journalist Kevin Drum warned in Mother Jones? Do “smart machines” threaten us with “long-term misery,” as the economists Jeffrey D. Sachs and Laurence J. Kotlikoff prophesied earlier this year? Have we reached “the end of labor,” as Noah Smith laments in The Atlantic?

Sorry, but you are simply mistaken.

I don't know how many years ago you worked in agriculture, but what you are saying is complete nonsense. I visit several dairy farms a week all over the US. Except for Amish farmers, there are no Americans working in milking parlors. None.

As for automation, your BLS source is ridiculous. Of course ag sector employment seems to be declining -- it's because of illegals.

I program (among other things) robotic milking systems. There are almost NO buyers of these systems in the US. About 95% of them are sold in Europe. Why? Because US farmers have access to slave labor, and European farmers don't. It's an enormous lament in our industry that we are falling farther and farther behind the Europeans in many aspects of dairy farming because of the availability of illegal labor.

I understand farmers want to pretend that they aren't part of this problem, but they are. A HUGE part. The phrase "work Americans aren't willing to do" originated in agriculture. But when you actually find out what farmers are willing to pay you discover the real problem is "Americans aren't willing to do this work at the crap level of pay I'm willing to offer." And they shouldn't be. Robots should be milking cows, not Mexicans. And farmers shouldn't be lying about the extent of their complicity in this corrupt system.

Technology is a force multiplier, and when you multiply the force enough your need for people drops dramatically. Manufacturing sector jobs have been dropping world wide for quite a while, and output is climbing. We just don’t need as many people to make the stuff we use. And that trend is going to continue, 3D printers have the potential of not only eliminating manufacturing jobs but also retail jobs as we no longer need to go to stores to buy the stuff but also transportation sector jobs as stuff is no longer being shunted from manufacturer to retailer through distributor.

Just look at cargo ships to see what’s been happening, they’re dramatically larger now with miniscule crews, and they run almost entirely on autopilot and don’t really even need the crews they have. Technology is moving in a direction where the only people in the equation are the consumers.

You should look at how mining operations before you say machines can’t do your job. Strip mining already runs mostly automated machines, now that work is a lot less delicate than landscaping, but that’s a matter of refinement, which means machines can’t do your job YET, but someday they will.

We’re in an interesting time, the force multiplying effect of technology is accelerating faster than we can find new things for people to do. That was always the benefit of tech, while it made it so we needed less people to do X that left more people to do Y, now it turns out the tech is doing Y too. Could be awesome, could be horrible, only time will tell.

I know what farmers are willing to pay. I was one of the farmers paying people. Some of them white people. Some of them were teenage kids. And, when I had enough money left over, me.

There are three issues with the robotic milkers:

First, the regulatory issue. That was a barrier years ago, which now appears to be falling.

Second, there are two models of dairying in the US: the “California Dutch” model of huge dairies with minimal investments in land (these used to be my customers) and huge herds. I’ve seen 8,000 milking head on a half section. Man, was that place in the central valley of CA *ripe*. Woof.

Then there’s the “Wisconsin” sort of model, a couple hundred head, family labor, etc. These operations are where I’d expect to see the Lely and other machines make inroads - the 100 to 500 head operations.

The automated/robotic milkers I saw at farm shows in California would serve only a few hundred head per day. The California Dutch outfits would need dozens of these machines to get through their entire herd.

The third issue is that the Dutch being who they are, aren’t going to spend the money. They’ll want to buy the machines at zero percent down, zero percent interest and leave the manufacture stiffed in BK court when they next go broke because they were making their operation turn on cheap financing.

As for the Dutch: they’re their own worst enemies. After they’ve screwed enough people, they’ll find no one wants to do business with tham.

After dealing with these clowns for several years, I realized that we’d make more money and set better prices by going after the retail horse feed market rather than selling hot alfalfa to the dutchmen. The Dutch dairies in California loved to gyp anyone and everyone they did business with. They have “their” hay test lab, so they can game the test on your hay and low-ball you on prices by claiming your hay didn’t make test. If you’ve got your own lab, and are willing to pony up the money to double-test the hay, you’ll find out that their lab always reads low. Always.

They claim to buy your hay (putting down only 20% and then paying by the truckload), but they leave it sitting in your barn all winter, paying nothing to store it there. They then claim “that’s my hay and I can leave it there” - but they’re paying by the load. If they want to claim “my hay,” they should be paying for all of it.

Then they send drivers who “conveniently” seem to forget which stack of hay they’re pulling from. Funny how they always mistakenly load the better hay than what they’ve paid for. Oh, and the really low-rent trick: The drivers would try to get out of the stackyard without paying the squeeze operator (which is the buyer’s responsibility), leaving me stuck with the paying the guy $80 to $100 to load the trucks.

As far as I’m concerned, the Dutch dairy grifters can go to hell, and take their illegal workforces with them.

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Smash All the Machines!

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